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Ladies love a man in red

Simply wearing the color red or being bordered by the rosy hue makes a
man more attractive and sexually desirable to women, according to a
series of studies by researchers at Rochester and other institutions.
And women are unaware of the arousing effect.

The cherry color’s charm ultimately lies in its ability to make men
appear more powerful, says lead author Andrew Elliot, a professor of
psychology at Rochester. “We found that women view men in red as higher
in status, more likely to make money, and more likely to climb the
social ladder. And it’s this high-status judgment that leads to the
attraction,” Elliot says.To quantify the red effect, the authors of
the paper published last month in the Journal of Experimental
Psychology: General, analyzed responses from 288 female and 25 male
undergraduates to photographs of men in seven different experiments.
Participants were all self-identified as heterosexual or bisexual. In
one color presentation, participants looked at a man’s photo framed by a
border of either red or white and answered a series of questions, such
as: “How attractive do you think this person is?”

In several experiments, the shirt of the man in the photographs was
digitally colored red, gray, green, or blue. Participants rated the
pictured man’s status and attractiveness and reported on their
willingness to date, kiss, and engage in other sexual activity with the
person. They also rated the man’s general likability, kindness, and
extroversion.

The researchers found that the red effect was limited
to status and romance: red made the man seem more powerful, attractive,
and sexually desirable but did not make the man seem more likable, kind,
or sociable. The effect was consistent across cultures: undergraduates
in the United States, England, Germany, and China all found men more
attractive when wearing or bordered by red.

The paper was coauthored by Daniela Niesta Kayer, Rochester; Tobias
Greitemeyer, University of Innsbruck; Stephanie Lichtenfeld, University
of Munich; Richard H. Gramzow, University of Southampton; Markus A.
Maier, University of Munich; and Huijun Liu, Tainjin Medical University.
The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and an Excellence Guest
Professorship at the University of Munich funded the research.